LeEco to offer its content to users of its smartphones and televisions

LeEco is setting up own delivery network in 10 cities to offer its content to users of its devices — smartphones for now, and televisions later.Gulveen Aulakh | ET Bureau | February 26, 2016, 10:12 IST

LeEco is aiming to do what no smartphone maker has attempted in India so far. The Chinese technology company is setting up its own delivery network in 10 cities including Delhi and Mumbai to offer its content to users of its devices — smartphones for now, and televisions at a later stage.

It is setting up local servers in the 10 cities for faster and seamless distribution of content as the company tries to differentiate itself in a crowded, intensely competitive and commoditised market in a bid to become the No. 1 online player in a couple of months and a top three smartphone player by the year-end.

"Just mobile phones is becoming a zero profit game. We’re setting up content delivery network (CDNs) in India, in 10 locations, and we’ve already done in Delhi and Mumbai," said Atul Jain, chief operating officer for India operations. "We are also talking to some operators, almost in the final stages with some telecom operators" for tie ups in the country which is among its top focus markets, he said.

CDN is an interconnected system of cached servers deployed in geographical locations close to where customers are, enabling better user experience specially while streaming video content over the Internet.

For India, which the company entered in January, LeEco plans to tie up with providers to deliver third-party content and exclusive content and may even evaluate producing its own local content. It is already partnering with Eros and Yupp TV for content on mobile phones.

Jain added that LeEco has produced and acquired content to build a library of over 100,000 hours of TV episodess and over 5,000 hours of films in China. The company plans to launch televisions in India by June, and elecric vehicles later in the year.

LeEco has 650 such CDNs across the world connected through cloud, Jain said.